Night of Exploding Mead

Back in April, in preparation for the Viking Tournament that Mountain's Gate hosted, I made two meads: a quick mead and a regular one. The quick mead was AWFUL. The regular one fermented energetically for a couple days, then slowed down. Now, let me explain my brewing philosophy: I like to keep it simple. I don't generally measure specific gravity and figure out how much alcohol potential a brew has, because that requires futzing around with tools that I'm pretty sure period brewers lacked. I strive for cleanliness and make a real effort to either sterilize or disinfect everything that comes in contact with my cooled wort, but I'm not really into the trappings of modern brewing. I made a mash tun out of a large round Home Depot 5 gallon water cooler, which is as much futzing as I can tolerate. I like making a mash, instead of using malt extracts or dried malt extracts, because I'm pretty sure that period brewers didn't use extracts. I strive to recreate the brews that my ancestors might have made.
Therefore, it is only with extreme reluctance that I measure specific gravity, which Miach consistently measures with his brews. And as with many things, Miach does have a good point: if you don't measure the specific gravity, how will you know when the brew has finished fermenting? However, I also believe that my own point is good: specific gravity won't necessarily go to "1.0" due to the yeast going dormant if the alcohol content reaches a certain percentage, and the mash perhaps being heavier than usual with sugars.

So, the regular mead -- which actually is a metheglin, since I added a few teaspoons of Heather extract to it -- just didn't do much after a couple days. I racked it into a new carboy, and put it in the garage (Meads like warmer fermentations) and every so often I'd go out and sniff over the airlock to see if it was still putting off CO2. When I racked it, I tasted it because Miach insisted that we measure the specific gravity and I humored him. It tasted REALLY good, and I felt that was a bad sign. Too much honey not fermented yet. So, I let it sit out in the garage for another 3 months. Finally, it seemed like it wasn't doing much of anything at all any longer, so I decided to bottle it. Miach again insisted that we measure the specific gravity, and then he became quite huffy and insistent that it was not ready to bottle. But really, it wasn't detectably fermenting AT ALL to my senses of smell and vision. So, of course, I disregarded his advice and bottled it.

Last night, just before dinner, we heard a loud "POP" and fizz. For a brief moment, I wondered what it could be, but then I realized with some alarm and a sinking sensation that it had to be my mead. Sure enough, a bottle had blown it's cork. About half of it had shot out all over the dining room carpet, and scared Maggie the Nervous Yorkie into the furthest corner of the house she could find to get away from it. Miach was again insistent that we put all the mead back into a clean carboy to avoid disaster, and I really didn't want to do that because it aerates the mead and that is not good once fermentation has started. So I drank the rest of the bottle, which was very sparkly and fizzy and sweet. As we were finishing dinner, "POP" and "POP". Frenetic activity ensued, with Miach cleaning the dining room carpet and me carefully opening the remaining 15 bottles of mead and pouring them into a disinfected carboy. All of the bottles gave a nice "POP" when I de-corked them, and at least half of them gave a very hearty "POP" and the cork popped out with only a bit of help, and then they fizzed out like champagne onto the kitchen floor. After I got the mead into the carboy and re-sealed the bubbler on top (that's the picture at the top; the Belgian Monk's Ale is wearing a pink T-shirt to the left of it, in a bucket fermenter), I also got to mop the kitchen floor down.

That mead is sooooo good. It will break my heart if it is ruined from aeration. Updates to follow.
Not for the first time, Miach is irritatingly correct in his reasoning.